


Qotsisajak

by CarelessHux (AraSigyrn)



Series: Qotsisajak (The Code of the Sith) [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Betrayal, Dark Side!Ending, M/M, Sidious's manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24775225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/pseuds/CarelessHux
Summary: "Always Two there are..."Rey's refusal doesn't matter as much as she hoped it would.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Qotsisajak (The Code of the Sith) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835542
Comments: 18
Kudos: 71





	Qotsisajak

The shrivelled corpse of the Emperor cackles as Rey wavers. Ben is staggering behind her and she's clawing for any control over her own mind. His touch is like an oily stain spreading through her mind and deeper into her soul. The only light in the dark throne room is the flash of weapons being fired by the ships in orbit but still his eyes glow. She clings to the Light, to the thousand whispers of the Jedi who went before her and who stand with her now.

"So you would reject your destiny?" The Emperor's smile is a ghoulish rictus. "Reject the Dark and the power that is in your very blood?"

"Yes," Rey grits out. "Always!"

The Emperor's laughter rings through the throne room. "So be it! Your choice means nothing."

She can feel Ben's confusion echoing her own. This close, their thoughts trip over each other and his emotions surge and boil under her skin. She can barely think past his feelings. The bond between them is as rapacious as the Emperor who caused it to come into being but she can't fight two battles at once. She holds her 'sabre up and forces her wobbling legs to lock.

It's Ben who hears the marching footsteps echoing up from the lift. It's Rey who looks back in time to see the white-armoured stormtroopers march off the lift in perfect formation. The Knights of Ren, heads bowed, trail the neat lines like ragged scavengers. The troopers are all carrying blasters but they don't raise them even as Rey turns. She looks back at the Emperor, still laughing like a winning card shark in a cantina then the troopers pivot and march in two seperate lines, forming a square around the throne and the space before it. She feels Ben reaching for their minds but none of the troopers react.

"Your Master should have instructed you in the ways of the Sith," Sidious crows as the last of the troopers pivot and march to their places. "As Darth Bane decreed, there must always be _two_."

Rey turns again and feels Ben's horror like it's a third entity between them. She doesn't recognize the officer who follows the troopers off the lift. He's pale, dressed in a General's uniform with a bloody scorch mark over the solar plexus and red haired. Kylo Ren's 'sabre hangs loosely from a gloved hand. His eyes are downcast and he moves with the same robotic precision as the troopers, marching forward even as blood leaks down his leg.

" _Hux?_ " Ben chokes as the General stops before the throne.

Rey recoils as the General raises shining golden eyes to look at them. There's nothing in his expression; no hint of emotion in the Force that coils darkly around him. Ben staggers back as if struck.

"You-you're _dead_ ," Ben pleads with the silent figure. "You-Pryde killed you!"

"You mustn’t believe everything you are told, Kylo Ren," the Emperor answers and the silent General turns his head. "I must thank you for this gift."

"Fuck you!" Ben yells.

"I had thought him unfit for our great purpose," Sidious extends a hand and the General returns that blank golden gaze to them. "His ...attachment to you divided his loyalties. He would have followed you back to the Light, or as close as he could have hoped to go, before you left him to the Allegiant General's tender mercies."

"No," Ben's voice cracks and he looks at the silent General with horror in his eyes. "I never-"

"Betrayal is the final tempering of a Sith," Sidious's oily tone makes Rey feel desperately unclean and she senses the tendril of Force that smoothes across the General's cheek. "And such a betrayal as yours leaves him with only the Dark."

Rey throws herself forward, 'sabre raised. She doesn't see exactly what happens: there's a crushing grip around her wrist. She goes spinning through the air, landing hard. Her 'sabre bounces across the rough rock. It comes to rest against a white-armoured foot. The trooper doesn't move. Rey gasps for air as Ben hurls himself to her defence. She sees a flash of ... _something_ in those golden eyes. Then the General moves. He sidesteps Ben's charge, curving away from the swinging lightsabre. A booted foot stamps down. Ben goes cartwheeling through the air. His 'sabre rings against the rock as it tumbles away.

Ben rolls to one knee and she feels him reach for the Force. The Dark. Her cry strangles her. The General's snarl bares his teeth. She feels the Dark around him surge so powerfully that it knocks her breath from her lungs. She can't sense exactly what happens next; it's too powerful, too Dark for her. The General catches at something. She feels the rip and the tear as Ben staggers back. The Dark slips from his grasp, thick as the _Falcon_ 's exhaust but no longer responding.

"Good, _good_!" The Emperor gloats. 

"I-the Dark..." Ben stares up at the once-more impassive General. "What did you _do_?"

"You are once more a puppet of the Light," Sidious crows, "cut off forever from the power of the Dark!"

"How-?" Rey stares up at the General. She feels a sting of cold air against her cheeks. The taste of snow and smoke. For a moment his eyes catch hers and she feels an echo of mild curiousity before he turns back to the desiccated husk on the throne.

"Now," Sidious orders, "it is time. Strike them down, kill them both and complete your training, my boy."

The General's fingers curl around the hilt of Kylo Ren's lightsabre. He turns back to face them.

"There is no serenity," the Emperor intones.

"There is only passion," the General answers.

"Through passion..."

"I gain strength."

"Through strength," Sidious's words echo back from the robed masses behind him.

"I gain power." The General steps forward.

"Through power..."

"I gain victory." The General's face is in shadow, only those glowing gold eyes gleaming at them both.

"There is no Light," the Emperor hisses.

"There is only the Dark," the General's thumb finds the activation switch. For an instant, the lightsabre sputters into life. Then Rey feels the Dark around the General and the 'sabre's light sharpens, narrows into a single clean line of bloody red. "And through the Dark-"

Ben stares up at him. Rey feels his tears as on her own cheeks. She can't fight through the overpowering Dark. She can't even move. She sees the slight curl of the General's lip.

"— _I am free_."

His free hand lashes out. Sidious screams as he is torn from his support. The Force hurls him across the throne room. He lands in a cloud of dust. The massed crowds sway, confusion and fear spreading out in waves of terror. The General nods. The troopers raise their blasters. The Praetorians fall. The technicians die squealing. The robed masses break into a screaming tide of bodies trying to outrun the remorseless fire. The General lifts his head and Rey feels him reaching up and out. 

She feels the mind that he touches, sees a dizzying panorama of the bridge through dozens of pairs of eyes and hears the General's whisper in her own ear.

 _Now_.

The General's will bears down on his target and she sees through a dozen pairs of eyes as the puppet presses down on a button and the displays light up with a constellation of new arrivals. She feels the surge of elation then the jarring sensation as the ship rocks under the fresh volley of fire. A blaster shot. The officer beside the puppet falls. The puppet touches a button. The alarms scream and Rey is violently thrown back to her own body.

The General lowers his gaze to focus on Sidious, crawling backwards. The 'sabre in his hand burns as he closes the distance between them with Force-enhanced speed. The Emperor's head sails into the shadows and Rey falls back to her knees. She feels his spirit, like a gathering storm and lightning crackles around them all. Ben is wheezing to one side, eyes on the confrontation.

The lightning crackles again, a web of power spiralling out and up into a shadowy mass that howls with the Emperor's voice. The General's lip curls as he meets the Emperor's ghostly gaze. Rey feels Sidious clawing at him, that bottomless void of hunger gaping wide enough to swallow him whole. The whites of the General's eyes turn black as space, only the burning gold irises still shining as they turn slowly red.

His rage boils up and out through the Force. Such rage. Such hate. Sidious's shade wavers and the General's free hand clenches into a fist. Sidious is a thing of shadow and ice. The General is fire. His fury sears the very Force around him. Rey tastes smoke and sees burning trees against gray snow when she blinks. Their wills crash together like planets and Rey feels Sidious break. The General's rage and fury scorch through the Force and deeper, chasing the shade of the Emperor and burning his very essence from existence. Rey can barely breathe. The fury and hate boiling around her threaten to consume her as they did Palpatine.

The Emperor's body dissolves into a fine ash, easily carried away by the winds billowing around them. Rey half-expects the air to catch fire around them. Ben is shaking on the floor beside her.

Instead the General closes his eyes. 

The rage, the hate, the _fury_. All of it vanishes like an extinguished light. The General breathes out and turns to face the throne. Rey can't get any sense of his thoughts as he studies it. She thinks he means to sit in it. The new and only Sith left. He approaches it, still steady even as fresh blood trickles from the wound on his leg. She hears the hum of anticipation from all around them, the dead yearning for vindication.

The General studies the throne for a long minute.

He moves suddenly, raising the 'sabre over his head and driving it down through the throne. The stone shatters like brittle transparisteel. Ren's sabre falls to the ground. The General looks up through the oculus and Rey sees the flash of weapons against the dark sky. She looks away when one of the troopers pulls off their helmet. She doesn't recognize the woman underneath but Ben sucks in a shocked breath. The woman doesn't look at him, eyes on the General.

"Hux?" Ben's voice wavers in the silence.

The General stiffens and Rey feels a shadow of that fury ripple through the Force. He turns to look down at Ben with those gold-on-black eyes and for a moment, Rey can almost see the bond between them; love, fear, anger, grief. It's too much emotion for her; too many things all at once. She can't even identify all the feelings that flow between them. For the first time, the General's mask cracks. Just an instant of anguish that makes Rey remember a ship flying into the blue sky and Unkar's hand on her arm. Then he jerks his head away and the bond snaps like spider-thread.

"Get rid of them," the General says without looking back.

The troopers move as one and Rey doesn't even have time to grab her lightsabre. They're swept up and bundled back on to the lift. Ben's shouting and trying to fight but the troopers are inexorable. She can barely sense their thoughts, hidden under a Dark shadow. She cranes her neck to look back. The last thing she sees is the helmetless trooper crossing to stand by the General's shoulder, both of them looking up. The Knights follow the troopers as they carry Rey and Ben back to where she'd left Luke's old X-Wing. 

There are more of the blocky dropships with red and white armoured troopers filing on in perfectly uniform lines. Closer than any of them, the _Upsilion_ broods over the crowd like a massive bird of prey. There is one officer there with two more Knights like towering shadows behind her. She turns as they are carried forward and Rey feels another flicker of recognition from Ben.

 _Unamo,_ he thinks. _Hux's woman to the last._ A dizzying flicker of images and memories of this woman, blank-faced and watchful at the side of the General. She doesn't look as guarded as Ben remembers her and there's a solid confidence in her bearing that seems new. One of the troopers hustling them along breaks from the pack to approach her.

Unamo nods curtly and gestures at the _Upsilion_. Another lieutenant — _Mitaka_ , Ben's memories tell her— comes hurrying down the ramp. He takes in their odd little group with a quick glance.

"We are almost ready," he tells Unamo. "Final Order's casualties stand at 96%. The _Reavent_ has locked coordinates."

"Our casualties?"

"Less than 5%," he says and motions two troopers down the ramp behind him. "The shuttle is fueled."

"The droid?"

"Programmed with the nearest coordinates," Mitaka salutes and Unamo nods. Rey looks past them to the pair of troopers who are half-steering, half-carrying a smaller figure with a bag over its head. Rey and Ben are dumped on their knees before the two lieutenants. Unamo barely spares them a glance, her attention on the troopers behind them.

"To your ships," she orders and they salute as one. The trooper who had been holding Rey steps forward to surrender their lightsabres to Unamo with a full salute. Unamo takes the weapons and the two Knights behind her shift uneasily.

Mitaka stares down at Ben for a long minute like he's looking at some strange alien. Then Unamo clicks her tongue and he shakes his distraction aside. "I will make the final preparations."

"Go," Unamo nods in answer to his salute and Mitaka quick-marches past the two troopers and their prisoner without looking at them. A black BB unit beeps as it passes him on the ramp but he doesn't pay it any attention.

"BB-9e," Ben breathes and the droid trills a greeting, zooming past the prisoner and their escort to stop in front of Ben. It bobbles its head in greeting and Rey wonders where BB-8 is. Somewhere overhead? Safe, she hopes. She feels the lump of Ben's emotions in her own throat and misses Unamo's order to BB-9e. Another BB unit, this one more red than black, zips past them. Rey sees it stop under the X-Wing and load itself onboard.

She turns, mouth open to complain, just as the prisoner is pulled to a halt in front of Unamo. The lieutenant gestures and the binders on the prisoner's wrists are unlocked. The troopers step back and Unamo steps forward to yank the bag off the prisoner's head.

"Han!"

"... _dad_!?"

The old smuggler staggers back a step and blinks. Rey sees the fear in his face as he focuses on them. He looks...alive. A little paler, a little thinner perhaps and his clothing is tattered but mostly clean. He doesn't look like a ghost. He doesn't feel like a ghost when she reaches her aching Force-senses towards him. She thinks she says something more but it's lost in the roar as the dropships start to lift off one by one.

"Hey, kiddos," Han manages.

Unamo snaps her fingers and Rey is suddenly hauled to her feet. The Knights. She can see Ben struggling to get his feet under him as the broken-masked Knight hoists him bodily into the air. Rey is released as Unamo accepts a code-key from one of the Knights behind her. Ben is likewise left wobbling on his own two feet. Unamo runs a dispassionate eye along the three of them and tosses the code-key to Rey.

"What-?"

"You should leave now," she says. Rey follows the tilt of her head and sees a shuttle parked just beyond the X-Wing. "Your allies have already started to depart. BB-9e is programmed with the necessary coordinates."

"Why?" Rey demands. An explosion from deeper in the monstrous Temple makes the ground shake. Unamo barely rocks back on her heels, lifting a hand to her ear and waving the Knights away. "Why are you doing this? Why are you helping us?"

"Orders," Unamo says in the condescending tone of an adult addressing a dull-witted child.

"We'll just be going then," Han says, catching Ben's arm and shooting Rey a pointed glance. She stumbles back a step, then two and none of the troopers react. The Knights look up as another explosion jolts the floor under them. Han pulls at Rey's arm and she turns, tripping over her feet as she starts towards the shuttle.

"Solo!" Unamo's call makes Han look back, awkward with Ben half-hanging from his shoulder. She tosses him the two lightsabres. "Go."

"Going!" Han nearly fumbles the lightsabres but he waves Rey on when she turns back. "We're going! Going now!"

Luke's X-Wing powers on and lifts off even as Rey helps Han drag Ben up the ramp and into the shuttle. It smells of cleaning solutions and stale air but it looks fine. Han leads them to the cockpit. The computer and the systems come online and Rey double-checks everything, searching for the trap.

"We don't have time for this," Han says as he takes the co-pilot's seat. 

"It's a trap," Rey says. "It's got to be."

"I don't think so," Han says. "But we don't have time to look a gift ship in the exhaust pipe."

"But-"

"Look out the window," Han says. Rey turns her head in time to see another four dropships blasting into the air. "They're all running. I don't know what they're running _from_ and I don't want to be here to find out."

Rey bites her lip and starts the pre-flight checks instead. It takes no time at all, the engines purr to life and BB-9e hooks itself into the nav-com. They follow the dropships up into orbit and nothing goes wrong. The space over Exegol is crowded with ships. Mostly Star Destroyers, blunt wedges amid the swirling masses of smaller ships.

They thread the first ring of enemy ships without even being challenged. Rey feels a constant prickle at the back of her neck as they fly higher. There are sporadic bursts of fire, mostly small ships dodging the greater ships. It's not a battle, she thinks. Han is spinning the dial on the comm channel. There's a lot of different voices, different languages and Rey laughs with the realization that the Galaxy had listened. They'd come to fight this last awful battle.

Han doesn't look so happy. Rey glances at him then back at the controls. "What is it?"

"What's what?" he says, frowning deeply.

"What's wrong?" She sees an explosion off in the distance. Cheering rings out across the comms and she feels a flicker of a smile.

"Nothing," Han lies and sends the dial spinning again. He frowns as more Resistance voices spill out of the speakers.

"What is it?" Rey demands.

Ben, huddled in the navigator's seat, is the one who answers. "It's all Resistance. Where is the Order? They should be broadcasting unencrypted when they're this close."

Rey frowns but now that she's listening, she can't help but hear the lack. Ben leans to look out the window. Rey steers them past the engine exhausts of one of the Final Order's Star Destroyers and Han echoes her gasp. There's no clear space. The black/grey of the planet's protective gas cloud is full of ships. A flare of green to their left makes them all stare. Turbolasers. 

"What?" Ben half-rises from his seat. "That's not possible!"

"What isn't?" Han says.

"They-" Ben shakes his head. "Those Star Destroyers, they're not-"

The shockwave tosses them around like dice in a cup and Rey regains her balance just in time to see the secondary explosions light up the length of the Star Destroyer below them. _Lucky shot?_ She barely has time to think it when another volley of turbolasers fire into the stricken ship. She follows the trajectory back up and feels her jaw drop.

The Star Destroyer directly over them fires again. They're close enough that she can see the massive weapons realigning to target the next Star Destroyer as the first starts to list into Exegol's atmosphere. Rey stares as the third volley blows the command structure of the other Star Destroyer apart.

"What the hell?" Han leans forward to stare up.

Rey almost can't believe her eyes but the chatter across the comms only confirms what she's seeing. The Resistance is bloodying the Final Order. The First Order are annihilating them. The double ring of _Resurgent_ class Star Destroyers have the Final Order's fleet caged between them and the planet below and are systematically exterminating them. 

" _Can_ anyone _get these guys on comms?_ " Poe's voice cuts through the babble. The comms fill with people saying that they've tried hailing the Star Destroyers. Nobody reports an answer.

" _They're not targeting one,_ " she vaguely recognizes the voice. Snap? One of the pilots under Poe's command, she's sure. " _The_ Reavent _isn't returning fire either. Krogglet says it's charging its main weapon. Can anyone confirm?_ "

" _Confirm charging of main weapon,_ " Poe sounds grim. " _I can't see—There's nowhere they can go? The First Order have them blockaded. What are they trying to do?_ "

More chatter. Rey feels the shiver through the Force. The Dark surges and the comms chatter takes on a shrill note of panic.

"Reavent _'s firing!_ "

She doesn't see the shot. Only the hellish light of the weapon firing. Not at the Resistance. Not at the massed ranks of the First Order.

The shot punches through Exegol's atmosphere in a searing burst. 

Rey sees the surface crack like an eggshell, fire and dust erupting. Almost in the same second, green turbolasers flash and the _Reavent_ shudders with secondary explosions, tipping down and into the shockwave of Exegol's destruction. She can hear Poe screaming at the Resistance to abort, to run and her hands find the controls just in time to send them away from the flying debris. The Star Destroyers above them are rising; engines flaring.

Ben makes a strangled sound and Rey looks back. He's staring at the Star Destroyer that they're passing.

"That's _impossible_ ," he says so softly that she doesn't think he meant to say it out loud. "She was crippled! I saw it!"

His hands curl into fists. "Fucking Peavey. Should have stopped that shot."

"You wanna share with the rest of us there?" Han barks.

"That's the _Finalizer_ ," Ben says. Rey can't see how he could possibly know that but Ben feels absolutely certain. 

"I thought she was-" Rey falters.

"So did I."

"Heads up!" Han taps at the console. "We've got company."

Rey follows his pointing finger. She thinks she's too tired, too confused to feel surprise. The silhouette that flashes past the viewport proves her a liar not two seconds later.

"That's-that's the _Upsilion_." She thinks perhaps the Knights are on board. She can't tell. The _Upsilion_ slips past her Force senses as easily as it evades the shuttle's sensors. Two fighters fly in formation alongside her and Rey can see the _Finalizer_ 's shuttle bay open to receive them. She looks at Ben who is staring up with an expression that makes her think of _Starkiller_. She looks at Han who just looks exhausted.

Above them, the hanger bay closes and there's another jolt as the _Finalizer_ vanishes into hyperspace. The tenor of the comms chatter changes rapidly as the rest of the _Resurgent_ class follow as silently as they'd fought. Rey shakes her head and looks back at Han.

"We need to get out of here," Han insists and BB-9e trills from its place. "Let's go!"

"Okay, okay!" Rey confirms the coordinates, fingers hovering over the button until she hears Poe ordering the last of their ragtag army to "get out of here! Get to safety!"

They barely hit hyperspace ahead of the shockwave. Rey falls back into her seat. She can't trust it yet. It feels like they shouldn't have survived. Everything that's happened...she doesn't know where to begin. She can still feel the dyad between her and Ben but it's fragile in a way that it wasn't under the Emperor's eyes. All she can feel from him is pain and regret thick enough that it nearly chokes them both. Like Han and _Starkiller_ but a thousand times more. The General stands in the eye of his emotional storm; eyes flickering gold then green. 

Rey can't hear herself think over the din. Her shields come up, stronger and more certain than they ever were before. She looks over at Han who is fussing over the console. She can't understand Ben's feelings for the General. She can't even think of Sidious without feeling that oily, pervasive sense of violation. She doesn't know what it means for the First Order to destroy the Final Order as it did. She doesn't know what the rise of another Sith means for the Galaxy and the War.

She can be grateful for this small act of mercy. 

Everything else can wait.


End file.
